‘Brutalist Berlin’ is an essential new guide for architectural tourists heading to the city

Our bookshelves are buckling under the sheer weight of concrete volumes, but Blue Crow Media’s latest treatise on the topic is at least lightweight – in form if not in subject. Brutalist Berlin is a love letter to German concrete, an exploration of fifty key structures that also tell the tale of the capital’s tumultuous twentieth century.

Flick through the pages of 'Brutalist Berlin'

As the original city of rain-streaked romance and all forms of subversion, Berlin is struck through with sentimental, overpowering architectural gloom. Its plethora of post-war Brutalism either helps or hinders this image, depending on your stance on this most divisive of all building materials. Naturally, author, photographer and architectural historian Felix Torkar is on the side of the aggregate angels.

Brutalist Berlin is both guidebook and history lesson, an expanded version of Torkar’s Brutalist Berlin map (2021). It’s part of a series that has allowed Blue Crow to effectively corner the market in charting and mapping the world’s dwindling stock of Brutalist masterpieces, from Paris, Boston, Montreal and London. The new book on Berlin follows on from Brutalist Interiors and is part of the publisher’s pivot to monographs as well as maps.

Some key buildings from Brutalist Berlin